Aspects of the disclosure relate to storage systems, and naming logical storage objects in a clustered storage environment.
Storage systems can have various configurations for fault tolerance and desired performance. Generally, the various configurations include multiple paths (“I/O paths”) between a server/host machine and a storage object (e.g., logical disk or physical disk) of a storage array through a storage area network (SAN). In the vocabulary of Internet Small Computer Serial Interface (iSCSI), the host machine is referred to as an initiator while the storage array is referred to as a target. An initiator accesses the target with a host bus adapter (HBA). Often, the initiator will have multiple HBAs. A controller for a storage array often has multiple ports that allow access to the storage objects of the storage array. Each port can be presented as a different target port for accessing the storage objects. Each HBA and target port pairing can define a path to a storage object. The number of I/O paths can be great in an enterprise storage system with multiple switches and any number of initiators and targets. With virtualization, the number of paths grows even more since a single physical storage array can be presented as a large number of logical storage objects accessible through a number of virtual ports.